Simple rules-based systems and methods for determining offer eligibility are generally known in the art. In a typical case, a consumer purchases a product or group of products from a retailer (or retail establishment) that maintains a rewards program in which the consumer participates. Upon checkout, the consumer provides identifying information so that the retailer can access the consumer's rewards program account, which contains, or has access to, the consumer's records. The consumer's records may contain the consumer's purchase history, account information, coupon redemption history, etc. The consumer may then receive a deal based on the consumer's records. A set of rules set by the retailer determines which deals, if any, the consumer will receive. Of course, many categories of retailers maintain such rewards programs, including grocers, clothiers, department stores, etc.
The known rewards engines underlying such systems are generally simple rules-based systems. For example, suppose a grocer wants to offer a deal for apples at the point-of-sale to those consumers that are currently purchasing apples and have purchased apples at least once in the past month. Upon identifying the consumer's rewards program account, the rewards engine determines whether the consumer meets the offer's rule requirements: (1) is the consumer currently purchasing apples? and (2) has the consumer purchased apples at least once in the past month. The rewards engine examines the consumer records, and if the consumer meets the rule requirements, then the consumer receives the apple deal at checkout.
One drawback of such simple rules-based systems is that they often times do not have the processing power to apply complex logic rules. One reason for this is that such systems ordinarily associate the consumer records with the parent rules of the logic tree that contains the relevant rule requirements of a particular deal. Processing speed is typically inhibited when the consumer records are associated with the parent rules of the logic tree. On the other hand, associating the consumer records directly with the child rules of the logic tree often times promotes faster processing. Because of this limitation, most simple rules-based systems cannot realistically apply complex retailer reward program offerings—particularly if the system determines the inputs to the system, i.e., the consumer records, and performs the entire analysis at the point-of-sale (where time is limited).
While such exemplary simple offer eligibility systems and methods work for the described purposes, a need exists for improved offer eligibility systems and methods, and, in particular, for systems and methods for determining offer eligibility using a predicate logic tree against sets of input data.